Why is a boxed in king stalemate a draw?

Not sure if this the the right spot since it's more of a history of the game / logic of the rules question.

So, i understand the rules of a stalemate. If the opponent can't make a legal move, it's a stalemate, which is a draw. I just don't understand how that's fair. The lone king has no way of winning against my 5 queens flanking him so hard he can't move. That's not a draw, it's a live capture of the enemy.

Is there any explanation why it was decided that having no move that doesn't result in immediate death would be a tie instead of a loss?

Thank you for listening to my rant. For context, I stalemate a lot because I play against Computer and like to promote all my pawns before checkmating. They worked hard, they deserve the promotion. But that very often ends up with me accidentally stalemating the king when I'm not paying attention to him crying in the corner.

The question was settled more than two centuries ago.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Treatise_on_the_Game_of_Chess/MFzzAAAAMAAJ?hl=en

Thank you. That's pretty much exactly what i was looking for.

No amount of history, explanation or justification could ever provide an objective ground for the stalemate draw - or win or loss for that matter. In fact the ultimate justification is of the a posteriori variety. Once the stalemate=draw rule is adopted, you have to be a pretty incompetent player to let your opponent get away with a draw when you are 5 queens up! The draw can be viewed as a penalty for incompetence demonstrated, nothing else. Is that penalty of the chess character? Yes, it is! The ability to visualize and judge future scenario's is the core of chess thinking. If you can't see the stalemate coming you won't see much coming in chess in general. The remedy is therefore obvious. Train you visualization skills to become a better player and you won't fall for the stalemate traps either.

This is the way I explained it to my nephews when they asked a similar question:

The objective is to checkmate your opponent's king.  To give checkmate, you have to put your opponent's king in check.  If your opponent has no move other than a king move and since it is illegal for him to move his king into check, then he can't move.  Since he can't move, you can't checkmate his king.  So you can't win, he can't win, you can't lose, and he can't lose.  Thus it's a draw.  That seemed to satisfy them better than just saying "It's the rules." 

I've always thought of it as a punishment for the attacking player's inability to checkmate with superior forces.

Nobody has lost (yet), but the game is unable to continue and is ended with a neutral result.

Note that not all stalemate positions are ones where one player is devastating another (e.g., multiple extra queens surrounding the king).  An example is KP vs K.  One side certainly has an advantage, but it is not necessarily a winning one.  The side without the pawn can defend the queening square and, if the timing is correct, they can stalemate themselves or force the win of the pawn.

The stalemate rule is written such that it encompasses multiple situations.  It would be unnecessarily complex to have different rules for similar situations where the only difference is amount of material - where would you draw the line between the situations?

Yes, very good.

N-no. You definitely don't understand why it's a draw.

The rules evolved over time. When you go back far enough, as you might expect, there were many different sets of rules used by various groups.

All rules that have survived until today have the basic justification that they're an improvement over alternatives... now WHY stalemate as a draw is an improvement is something most players don't know, because they're not good enough... stalemate as a draw has an enormous impact on endgame evaluations, which in turn affects middlegame strategy. Stalemate as a draw is superior because it balances the influence of tactics (short term forcing moves) with strategy (long term unforced moves). If stalemate were a win then chess would be more materialistic and less strategic.

Also, and this is just my opinion, this is the main appeal of chess over similar games. Shogi is more tactical than chess but less strategic. Go (weiqi/ igo) is more strategic but less tactical. International chess (the game we play on this website) is a very nice balance of both.

Of course for beginners this issue is completely different. Beginners accidentally draw games with stalemate because they can't see the board very well yet... but this has nothing to do with why the rule is the way it is.

     The logic is simple. The only way to win a game of chess is to checkmate the opponent's king. (Losing on time, being caught cheating, resignation, are conventions governing tournaments, not part of the rules governing the playing of the game.)

     There are also rules governing how pieces move. You can't move a pawn two spaces forward from its original position if there is a piece occupying the intervening square. A bishop can't change the color of the squares on which it moves. And you can't make a move that puts your king into check.

     Therefore, in a stalemate position no further moves by either player are possible. It doesn't matter how many ways you might checkmate your opponent were it your move, you will not get another move in that game. The game is finished.

     However, you have not accomplished the object of the game. You have not checkmated your opponent. You have not won the game. Neither player has won, the game is a draw.

That's pretty much my problem. Always the diagonals. I have a terrible time keeping track of the diagonals.

In fact... I think it'd be fine for stalemate to be a win for the player with more material up until a certain rating (pick whatever you want... 1500? CM? I don't really care heh). But then after that level stalemate is a draw, because after a certain level it starts affecting the game itself.

That's an illogical connection. By agreeing to the absence of an objective justification for assigning one score or another you admit there is no good why. And next you complain I don't understand the why!?

The point of my argument is that the why doesn't matter as long as the application of the rule fits the character of chess thinking. The rule would have been "out of character" had it for instance required that you decide the stalemate outcome by a rock-paper-scissors draw!

Yeah, I guess I gave the first statement too much credit. I was thinking no amount of apriori justification... because as I said, ultimately it's the fact that chess fills this nice niche of balancing tactics and strategy, and even if those other games didn't exist, what determines "balance" or a "good" rule is up to the subjective human experience of the game.

Which leaves us with the last standing existential issue. What will be the sequence number of the next llama?

Let me guess. llama60 maybe?

Giving the losing side the resource of stalemate allows the losing side to play on with some hope.

Imagine the number of pawn endgames which would be instant wins without the stalemate ruling.

This means that I have been punished up to 56 times for having 56 games which ended in stalemate.

Never considered that. No hope of winning, but if you play it right, you could force a draw. So the late game still matters.

Not even I know